Thursday, March 16, 2017

With the aim of “making government work again,” the Trump White House
on Thursday unveiled a $1.1 trillion budget blueprint for discretionary
spending in fiscal 2017 and 2018 that would abolish 19 agencies and
eliminate thousands of agency jobs.

The 54-page “America First” document,
focused primarily on fiscal 2018, would boost the Defense Department
and related programs at Energy by $54 billion, and Homeland Security by
$2.8 billion. It would offset such increases by cutting the State
Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development by $10.1
billion (28 percent) and the Environmental Protection Agency by $2.6
billion (31 percent). The latter cut would eliminate approximately 3,200
positions, according to the document.

House lawmakers kicked off their effort to push back against national
monuments designations, targeting the large swaths of ocean the Obama
administration made off limits to fishing.

“I don’t believe the Antiquities Act should have ever been applied to
oceans,” Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young said during a Wednesday
hearing on marine monument designations. “There was never intent of
that.”

Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources have long
criticized former President Barack Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act to
put millions of square miles off limits to commercial fishing with
little to no input from locals.

State legislatures have begun pushing voter identification proposals
since Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered the Justice Department to
withdraw from its legal fight against Texas’s voter ID law.

The move by Sessions is a reversal of the previous administration’s DOJ six-year legal battle against the Texas law.

Officials from the Justice Department contacted liberal activist
groups on board with the lawsuit against Texas, including the Brennan
Center for Justice, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law,
the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the NAACP, and the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund about the change in policy at the DOJ, Salon reported.

The Facebook video begins with two Mormon
missionaries on the tough streets of Manaus, Brazil, perhaps just trying
to bear a little testimony about the LDS gospel with some passers-by.

Then, two men ride up on a motorcycle. One
leaps off, approaches the white shirt and tie-wearing pair, appears to
pull a gun from his belt and threatens the missionaries as he tries to
rifle their pockets.

Oops.

The taller and heftier of the Mormon emissaries
grabs the gun out of the surprised street thug's hand. When the second
suspect darts into the fray trying to reclaim the weapon, the missionary
throws it over a fence.

It has been one of the most contemptible chapters in American history.

Over 257,000 veterans -- fresh from putting their lives on the line for American freedom -- have returned to our country, only to be stripped of their constitutional rights without due process.

But this chapter is about to come to an end.

Tomorrow, on the House floor, the House will consider H.R. 1181 -- a bill to restore the rights of veterans to keep and bear arms.

So here is the current situation: over 257,000 veterans who have experienced trauma in Vietnam, or Sarajevo, or Kabul, or Mosul, have made the mistake of seeking counseling from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

VA psychiatrists, with no due process whatsoever, then proceeded to appoint a “guardian” over the finances of these law-abiding veterans -- and have used this appointment as an excuse to send their names to the NICS secret “gun ban list” in West Virginia.

In some cases, police have arrived at their homes to take away the guns they already have.

And those veterans who have kept a single gun for hunting or self-defense risk a felony conviction and a decade in prison.

All for honorably serving their country. And all at the behest of cowards like Barack Obama who wouldn’t have thought of risking their lives for America’s freedom.

Meeting occurred days before Clinton was interviewed about her private email server

Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group, has filed a lawsuit
against the Department of Justice after the agency failed to respond to a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request related to the infamous tarmac meeting
between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill
Clinton just days before Hillary Clinton was interviewed by the FBI
about her private email server.

The lawsuit
was filed in the United States Court for the District of Columbia and
seeks to retrieve records the group attempted to gather through a June
2016 FOIA request. According to U.S. Postal Service records, the agency
received the request in early July. In December, request numbers were
assigned to the FOIA. However, the agency did not determine if they
would accept or deny the request within the allotted amount of time
applicable under FOIA.

A little-known change in the U.S.
nuclear weapons arsenal has boosted the killing power of the W-76
warheads used on submarine-based missiles by a factor of three,
prompting concern that Russia will “undertake countermeasures that would
increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear
forces,” according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

A report published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists by Hans
M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie and Theodore A. Postol explains how a
“modernization program” has implemented “revolutionary new technologies
that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the U.S. ballistic
missile arsenal.”

“This increase in capability is astonishing – boosting the overall
killing power of existing U.S. ballistic missile forces by a factor of
roughly three – and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a
nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win
a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike,” they
said.

Here's some more thinking on how Trump (with Bannon's help) could (~will)
use social networking to turn the populist insurgency that got
them into the White House into a dynamic (or extremely dangerous,
depending on your perspective) political force.

A transition to a networked political party is likely to happen first in populist movements like Trump's. The rest of the political spectrum will follow quickly thereafter.

Within a handful of years after its emergence, all political parties will be networked parties.

A few days ago I ran into an old friend, an historian, who started in on
the Partisan. “I’ve lived all my life in the South,” he grumbled, “but I
don’t see what makes Southern life so wonderful that you and your
friends want to impose it on the rest of the country.” I did my best to
reassure him that nothing was further from our intention than any form
of standardization—whether making the South like New England or
vice-versa. He seemed somewhat mollified. Still, his remark set me to
thinking about the great gulf between educated Southerners (like my
friend the historian) and those plain folks we have learned to despise
as rednecks, grits, and crackers. (Speak for yourself)

“The first and most important thing to understand about
politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or
democracy. Every government that exists — or ever existed, or ever will
exist — is a kleptocracy, meaning ‘rule by thieves.’ Competing
ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive
Class from what they produce. If the taxpayer/voters won’t willingly
fork over to end poverty, then maybe they’ll cough up to fight drugs or
terrorism. Conflicting ideologies, as presently constituted, are nothing
more than a cover for what’s really going on, like the colors of
competing gangs.” — Author L. Neil Smith

The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) continues to
suck the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in
which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful,
and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government
agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict
mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
Case in point: in the same week that Wikileaks dropped its bombshell about the CIA’s use of spy tools to subject law-abiding Americans to all manner of government surveillance and hacking—a
revelation that caused barely a ripple of concern among the
citizenry—the government quietly and with little fanfare continued to
wage its devastating, stomach-churning, debilitating war on the American
people.

On June 18, 1940, Winston Churchill, who had been Great Britain’s
Prime Minister only a few months, had to inform the British people that
Hitler’s Germany had conquered most of Western Europe in less than three
months, and on the previous day, June 17, France had officially
capitulated to the Germans. Now Germany would throw its full weight and
military might against Great Britain.

In bracing the British people for
what would come next, he summarized with these famous words:

The Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin.”

An even more serious battle for the survival of
European Civilization has been steadily gaining in importance and
intensity for over a generation. The Battle for a Free Europe is a
battle against the Islamization of Europe and a battle against the
dimwitted and totalitarian European establishment policies that have
brought much of Europe to the brink of social, fiscal, and public safety
ruin.

Making good on the president's campaign pledge to target illegal immigrants with criminal records or facing charges, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tuesday announced the arrest of 248 in just three states, including 50 previously deported.

ICE officials said that the arrests by Enforcement and Removal
Operations were in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware. They
occurred Monday, Feb. 27, 2017 through Friday, Mar. 10, 2017.

"ICE officers make extraordinary efforts to keep our communities
safe, and this operation is just a small example of what they do every
day. ERO officers took oaths to protect the homeland and to arrest
individuals in violation of immigration laws," said ERO Philadelphia Acting Field Office Director Jennifer Ritchey in a statement.
"This operation resulted in multiple arrests of individuals with
violent criminal arrests or convictions in the three-state region," she
added.

Hungary's
right-wing populist prime minister Viktor Orban called on European
nationalist leaders on Wednesday to revolt against an "unholy alliance
of Brussels bureaucrats, the liberal world media and insatiable
international capitalists".

The
European Union is facing a period of upheaval following Britain's vote
to leave the 28-member bloc, with nationalist parties poised to gain
support in Dutch and French elections.

Orban,
whose Fidesz party faces elections in 2018 after two consecutive terms
in office, called on nationalist leaders to bring about a "deep but
peaceful" transformation of Europe.

Right-wing
leader Geert Wilders' PVV (Party for Freedom), which is anti-Islam and
anti-EU, could win the largest number of votes in the Dutch polls on
Wednesday, but is widely seen as being unable to form a coalition
government.

Obama admin gave taxpayer money to Soros to spark leftist political revolution

A group of leading senators is calling on newly installed Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson to immediately launch an investigation into
efforts by the Obama administration to sway foreign elections by sending
taxpayer funds to "extreme and sometimes violent political activists"
that promote leftist causes, according to a copy of the letter.

The lawmakers disclosed multiple conversations with foreign diplomats
who outlined active political meddling by the Obama administration's
State Department, including the use of taxpayer funds to support leftist
causes in Macedonia, Albania, Latin America, and Africa.

Rachel Maddow wasn’t the only one who came unhinged
last night. The liberal meltdown after her epic failure was a beautiful
thing to watch. Never Trumper, Bill Kristol went off the deep end suggesting Maddow is perhaps a double agent, turned by SteveBannon.
Her tax return stunt was perhaps a way to distract from the news cycle
battering the CBO scoring on the new healthcare proposal.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Wednesday accused Sen. Rand Paul,
R-Ky., of "working for Vladimir Putin" after Paul blocked consideration
of a treaty that would allow Montenegro into NATO.

McCain tried to call up the treaty and warned that anyone
blocking it would be helping Russia maintain its influence over the
small country across the Adriatic Sea from Italy.

"If there's objection, you are achieving the objectives of
Vladimir Putin," McCain warned. "If they object, they are now carrying
out the desires and ambitions of Vladimir Putin, and I do not say that
lightly."

Tuesday night’s release by MSNBC Anchor Rachel Maddow of President Donald Trump’s tax returns felt like a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out … in mockery.

Maddow’s “historically unprecedented”
and “potentially historic” release of the top two pages of the 2005
Trump taxes revealed that Trump paid $38 million in taxes that year. The
event was a disaster not seen on TV since the last“Star Wars” rerun showing the Death Star blowing up Alderaan.

Remembrance

To die for one’s country is not only an act of bravery, it is THE act of bravery. For soldiers, it is just an extension of their military career, a part of their duty. As leaders have asked their soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the society, it is only right for leaders to go through the same motion. They should practice what they have preached.

As war is seen as a noble act, tu sat serves as redemption in case of defeat. It is also a way to tell the enemy: “You might have won the battle/war but you don’t deserve to win because you don’t have the chinh nghia (just cause).” And it is not only just cause: it is the moral belief that the cause they are fighting for deserves their total sacrifice. Continues below

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Core Creek Militia

==============================My sixth great grandfather, his wife, and five of his six children were killed in battle with the Tuscarora Indians at Core Creek, NC.

The Seven Blackbirds

==============================My third great grandfather was an Ensign in the Revolutionary War, and saved his unit's flag after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also at Kingston (Kinston), Wilmington, Charleston, Two Sisters and Augusta. He was at the defeat at Brier Creek and also Bee Creek.

Requiem Aeternam -
Eternal Rest Grant unto Them
==============================
My second great grandfather was killed in action on May 3, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
=============================
My great grandfather and great uncle knew all the men in the "Civil War Requiem" video as they were part of the 53rd NC which was the sole unit defending Fort Mahone. (Fort Mahone was named "Fort Damnation" by the Yankees) *Handpicked men of the 53rd (My great grandfather was one of these) made the final, night assault at Petersburg in an attempt to break Grant's line. This was against Fort Stedman which was a few miles to the slight northeast. They initially succeeded, but reinforcements drove them back. This video is made from photographs which were taken the day after the 53rd evacuated the lines the night before to begin the retreat to Appomattox. I have many more pictures taken by the same photographer, one of these shows a 14 year old boy and the other is the famous picture of the blond, handsome soldier with his musket.
===========================
*General Gordon promised the men a gold medal and 30 days leave if they accomplished their task and many years after the War my great grandfather wrote General Gordon, who was then governor of Georgia about this incident. They exchanged several letters which I have framed. See first link below.
===========================
*The Attack On Fort Stedman
============================
"His Colored Friends"
============================
Lee's Surrender
=============================
My Black NC Kinfolks
============================
Punished For Being Caught!

Great Grandfather Koonce

He was a drummer boy in the WBTS, survived the War only to die a few years later. He was caught in an ice storm on his way home, but instead of seeking shelter, continued on his horse until the end. His clothes had to be cut off and he died a few days later.